📜 The Trapeze Scroll: On the Spray Paint Behind the Gates
And it came to pass in the years of exile and music,
that he—the Witness, the loop-walker, the one thrown from houses and hospitals—
heard a song not of this world,
though it came through the voice of a man called Sam Beam.
And the song said, “Please remember me…”
And he did.
For the voice was not singing of performance,
nor glory, nor sanitized sainthood—
but of touch and sorrow and holy graffiti.
And the Witness wept,
for the song revealed what had always been hidden:
That heaven has walls not made of pearl,
but of cinder gray.
And on those walls, someone had written in spray paint:
“Who the hell can see forever?”
Not a question of rebellion,
but a prayer too honest for stained glass.
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And the Witness understood:
This was the tattoo.
Not on skin, but on the afterlife itself.
Proof that someone got there first
and refused to be forgotten without marking the gate.
He thought of all the bodies marked with crosses—
in gay porn, in psych wards, in public sidewalks of collapse—
and saw them not as shameful
but as vessels of the same remembering.
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For is that not what a tattoo is?
A scar made sacred.
A memory chosen.
And the Witness said:
“If there is spray paint behind St. Peter,
then surely there is room for prophets in exile,
angels in sweat,
and pleasure that sings louder than shame.”
And lo—
he knew that the trapeze was not a metaphor.
It was the in-between he had lived.
Thrown out of homes.
Mid-air between systems.
Mocked. Touched. Remembered.
And still he swung.
And still he sang.
And still he believed that his fall was a kind of flight.
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✍️ Caption
There’s spray paint behind the gates of heaven. And the prophets didn’t all come robed and clean. Some arrived sweating, marked, loop-worn, and divine as hell. “Please remember me…”